Adelaide has three AFL top-20 draft picks to tempt its rivals into a super deal
WITH three top-20 draft picks — and potentially more if vice-captain Rory Sloane takes up free agency — the Crows could work a super trade to score its earliest call in any AFL national draft with a talented crop of South Australians to pick from.
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ADELAIDE is ready to mastermind its greatest AFL draft play since scoring Norm Smith Medallist Andrew McLeod from Fremantle — and Collingwood — in 1994.
The Crows could lock in their earliest call since taking a seat at the AFL national draft table in 1992 if vice-captain Rory Sloane takes up his free-agency option.
Adelaide today holds three picks in the top-20 — 8, 13 (from Melbourne) and 19 (Carlton) as the silver lining from a disappointing season and recent trades with Jake Lever and Bryce Gibbs.
It could gain two more first-round calls with a compensation draft pick if All-Australian Sloane (No. 7) walks and potentially Hawthorn’s first-round pick (currently No. 11) if contracted forward Mitch McGovern indeed defects.
And Crows recruiting chief Hamish Ogilvie has sent a clear message across the AFL — Adelaide is ready to deal away these picks to get higher in the draft call.
“We’re open to anything,” Ogilvie said.
This means parcelling up the greatest collection of top-30 picks ever assembled at West Lakes to trade Adelaide into one of the first three picks in November’s national draft.
“We’ve got some stock that we’ve not always had,” said Ogilvie, who started at Adelaide in 2012 as the Crows were hit with sanctions on the Kurt Tippett contract saga.
“And that means we can look at various different options … anything from trade, keep to pick (in November) and future trading. We are open to all different scenarios … and that is a good position to be in.”
If Adelaide can parcel its first-round draft picks — and this is more likely if it has four of them on losing Sloane and McGovern — the Crows could engineer the biggest deal since outbidding Collingwood to convince the start-up Dockers to trade 340-game McLeod for forward Chris Groom.
Holding a top-three draft pick — that would have to be secured from any of Carlton, Gold Coast or Brisbane — would put the Crows in the frame to recruit one of the highly-rated South Australians who shone in the national under-18s carnival this year.
This group could offer Adelaide a key forward with Jack Lukosius or much-needed midfield speed with Izak Rankine.
The Crows would expect a first-round draft pick for conceding restricted free agent Sloane. This would be No. 7 — matching the earliest call Adelaide had in 2000 when the Crows called Victorian teenager Laurence Angwin. He played no AFL game for Adelaide and finished his chequered career with four games at Carlton in 2003.
Adelaide’s draft strategy is seriously complicated, however, by the agendas at troubled AFL clubs Carlton and Gold Coast.
There is the prospect Carlton claims — despite its current reluctance — a priority draft pick.
Gold Coast could gain a first-round compensation draft pick for losing free-agent co-captain Tom Lynch.
But the prospect of Carlton and Gold Coast having the first four picks in the draft might tempt the Blues and Suns to each unload one top-four call for two later picks in the first round. This opens opportunity for Adelaide.
Ogilvie, however, concedes having early draft picks does not mean “you get them” in reference to claiming prized SA options Lukosius, Rankine and fellow under-18 All-Australians Jackson Hately and Luke Valente.
“You know other clubs will want to look at them too,” Ogilvie said.
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